Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Achievement Whoring

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. I bought Batman Arkham Asylum on steam when it was on sale. Now I was holding out for Joker DLC, but sadly that never happened. Well, now I got every single achievement in the game so basicly I should go back to drawing..... but instead I turned my attention to other video games to check to see if there any other easy achievements to get. It's one of those moments where I start with the easy achievements and then I'm devoting an entire weekend onto getting super hard achievements.

By the way, I'm sharing my account with my cousin who has it tied with his children 360.
But anyway I have been sketching while the games are loading..... luckily Arkham Asylum has so little loading so it's very little from actual fighting.



Working on Bud and Lou, Joker and Harley's Pet Hyenas. Hyenas are so cute, didn't want to make them look vicious like they look on the animated series.

I love Harley and Ivy a lot, but I felt like there wasn't enough of an effort most artist trying to make them different. I do think it's funny as cartoon characters if they look the same but I do think they should be individuals in one form or another. Ivy has higher cheek bones, smaller eyes, longer legs larger bust, and Harley is rounder larger bottom, thicker hips large eyes for expression and a round happy smile

I actually don't mind the redesigns of Harley and Ivy in Arkham Asylum, the game felt a lot like reading a Graphic novel by Simon Bisley. But I did feel the motion capture and animation was a bit off since it didn't show them as cartoon characters. The Joy of Harley is really giver her really silly expressions because Arleen Sorkin's voice is AMAZING! One minute she's squeaky then the next she's crackling loud, the game's motion capture made her look like a cheap stripper, but then again everyone in the game is on steroids. Jim Gordon looks like he stomach crunches 3000 times a day and eats gravel. It's a style change I can live with.


To be honest I feel insecure how I draw women, so I'm like just going through a phase of analyzing my own work. Just working around eye size, and body shape.



I'm debating about doing an Arkham Asylum redesign cover, because the game should literally be just "BATMAN IN A MOSH PIT!" instead of Batman just casually standing there looking a bit lost.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

hog city needs you

an illustration I made for a short story in Schlock

I love Spaghetti Western movie posters, so I aimed for that grittiness. The textures were done with a napkin and a folded up sheet of paper with incress levels and layer options set to overlay.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

dragon sketches

I must confess I haven't seen How to Train Your Dragon yet. I just had this urge to draw dragons at least how to appeal to the inner 8 year old in me.

A bit of inspiration from Metal Gear Ray, it has such an organic design, hard not to be inspired by that.

A lot of my inspiration came from Final Fantasy Tactics and Record of the Lodoss Wars series. More so Tactics because they showed a lot of shape in such small sprites.

Hard for me to resist drawing crazy spikes, and billion scales, because as a kiddie I would get stuck doing that.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

escape through the woods

I was late to sent this piece for the Pixel Love art show for Michele Legendre. Still it's my favorite scene from Metal Gear Solid 3

I have a soft spot for big boss, so it took me a while trying to work on this piece.



I even painted it in water colors, it came out horrible, but it was a good warm up. I'll come back to it later down the line in a much better format.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Wicked Child

Alucard and Maria Renard along with familars and Richter Belmont and 3 coffins from Castlevania - Symphony of the Night. Made for Michele Lengendre upcoming Pixel Love art show.

If your asking why it's upside down, well basicly in order to unlock the true ending you must kill the green orb controlling Richter Belmont, and then replay the game with the inverted castle. But also the parallels of characters of Castlevania 3 and Symphony of the night which later on you fight them as zombies.

Maria is such a fun character to draw, I might draw her again. I added mostly all her animal friends from Rondo of Blood.

Some rough color studies, again it was fun drawing Maria, because of her long hair and the green is such a vibrant color to use instead of making someone look sickly.

Of course, I originally started working on this right side up. But I was sketching out ideas how to best display the characters and show off the coffins, and classic Symphony of the Night shot of Richter on Dracula's chair.

Richter was changed in order to make him stand out more then just fade into the background. There was a point where he was going to hold a wine glass, but I opted out. And also a rough idea where the animals will be, because I didn't know how much space they would take up in the composition. It was a difficult piece to design because there's a lot going on and I was uncertain if it'd be a mess.

Such a mess, don't know how I get anything done

Background coming along, super simple, and a bit desaturated in order to not be center of attention. Coffins are now designed and moved up in order to know how they would stick out from the main characters. And all of the familars are now layed out

Now understanding how it looked flipped around

I had such a hard time with this piece, a lot of it is because I lost the Richter Belmont layer close to the end and had to repaint him completely.

Finally closer to the final piece, more refine little details and more blending the familars into the backgrounds so they don't clash with one another.



some nice close ups



Thursday, October 28, 2010

Bloody Tears

A new castlevania 3 - Dracula's Curse piece, staring Trevor Belmont, Alucard, Sypha Belnades, and Grant Danasty made for Michele Legendre's upcoming Pixel Love art show. I'm so excited to participate in this and it gives me an excuse to be a video game nerd

now a brief behind the scenes of this development.
This has been in development for a month, long time just studying crypts. But still the idea is focusing on the heroes, so I just jumped into it and immediately drew the crypt with rough idea of the heroes.

Now carving out the shape of the heroes I designed shapes of the monsters. Making them more into shadows then actual designs of individual monsters.

Now sharper designs of each monster, fallowing sprites from the game. Except for Peeping eye, which is a monster I always enjoyed. Alucard's face was something I was getting annoyed with. So I decided to redraw him on a separate sheet of paper. I deeply considered redesigning his Costume since I was basing it off of Castlevania 3, but still his design from Symphony of the night is so iconic it's hard to eliminate all of it. So I went for a sleeker design



Now some early color schemes, I always intended to wash out the contrast as they blended into the colors of the background but also showcasing their own individual color schemes.

Now the effects around each character, to help illustrate their color schemes individually.

Now focusing on the background. There has to be two or three different colors on the wall, helps give the illusion of dirt and grime but still keeping that one color sceme. Also if you notice Trevor keeps getting his face redrawn but more importantly there's now another arm, helping him get some balance in his body movement. It's always a work in progress.

That's about it, until we get to the SUPER TIGHT Detail to enjoy.


Thursday, October 21, 2010

Color study

super quick 10 minute color studies. Just doing different contrasting colors on to different skin tones.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Vampire Killer

Castlevania's Simon Belmont made for Michele Legendre Pixel Love show

Unlike before where I went step by step, I think there were way too many steps on this. I'll show a bit of the early work
Early on it was a super rough make

Although originally I didn't design the face as detailed, it was suppose to be super rough. Still it was a fun experence trying to go something more detailed then simple shapes.

The hair was changed to look more in motion, but also more skeletons were added. Now it's still debatable if the scene is too crowded, but still the skeletons have a simple color scheme to them. In the final design they have more color variations because they express a lot for just simple army of the damned. Still it was fun making characters for each of them even though they are all based on enemies in previous castlevania games.

Some nice tight close ups your probably going to miss on this lower resolution